


Takes Two

by Screaming_Magpie



Category: City of Blank (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crack, Enemies to Friends, Gen, In which I project onto Jericho, Missing Scene, Road Trips, gay if you squint I guess, he is mentioned but not actually present, many many missing scenes actually, mostly just Jericlaude being mean to one another, no beta we die like Mikiah lol, pre-Mikiah road trip era, they're friends and I'll die on this hill, yall know what I'm about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29206512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Screaming_Magpie/pseuds/Screaming_Magpie
Summary: If you're singing punk songs out the window and I'm contemplating homicide, who's driving the car?It takes a base level of competence to pull off a road trip in one piece, and our boys don't got it. Snapshots of a journey, and a look at what normal used to mean.
Relationships: Claude and Jericho
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Takes Two

**Author's Note:**

> Hey shoutout to the CoB discord server for constantly giving me ideas, yall rule

Jericho drives. 

He's not all that good at it, but technically it's his car. He drives with the windows down, goes too fast and plays music too loud and gets too distracted and smokes the whole time and generally drives his passenger absolutely mental, if you'll excuse the pun. He drives faster when the music is more energetic, and taps his foot to any really good beat. His  _ gas pedal  _ foot. Trouble is, in yelling at him to watch the road, dammit, to slow down and put out that fucking cigarette, Claude only succeeds in further distracting him from the road he should be watching. After the fourth time he almost hits a speed limit sign Claude says "I will literally get out of this car and walk to Meryl if you don't hand me the keys right now." 

_ "Right  _ now?" says Jericho, mouth curling into a wicked grin. They are sailing down the highway, making 70 miles per hour, easy, and Claude can be forgiven, he thinks, for panicking a little when Jericho's hand drifts to the ignition. Any attentive passenger would have done their best to smack it away, and any competent driver could have kept the car out of the roadside ditch in the resulting scuffle. 

The road is largely empty, and this is their one saving grace. 

  
  


Claude drives. 

He's not much better, it turns out. The difference is that he's trying. 

"Can you even see over the wheel?" Jericho asks him, poking him in the ribs. "Do your feet even reach the pedals?" 

Claude jerks away reflexively, and as a result the car swerves and slides into the next lane before he rights it. Claude glares. 

"You absolute moron, it'll be your fault when we die no matter who's driving!" 

Jericho thinks antagonizing Claude is more fun than navigating, and figures out quickly that he can degrade the quality of Claude’s driving this way. He makes a game out of it, to Claude's eternal chagrin. Unfortunately for both of them, antagonizing Claude is an extremely easy thing to do. Most things about the world antagonize Claude in one way or another. Jericho drags them each forward, shit-eating grin and wicked eyes, and Claude grinds his teeth and curls his muscles and notices, after maybe twenty minutes, that he’s been jamming his gas pedal foot down progressively harder, and they are making almost 100 miles per hour. 

“Dammit!” he yells, and slams on the brake. Not the best course of action to take when your other foot is still on the gas. The car chokes and screams as the engine fights with itself, and Jericho takes this moment to glance over the map and announce, 

“Oh, we’ve missed our exit.” 

Defeated and with no other logical course of action remaining for him, Claude rolls to a full stop in the middle of the highway and thumps his forehead against the wheel. The car horn blares across the flat countryside. 

Helpfully, Jericho hits him on the head with the map. 

Again they are the only vehicle in sight. Again it is their one saving grace. 

  
  


They take turns driving. Disaster and incompetence still lurk around every corner, but at least they are equally accountable, in theory. Claude has to push the seat all the way forward every time it's his turn. Jericho has to push it all the way back. They forget to adjust the mirrors so often it's an honest-to-god miracle they never hit another car. They bicker and yell and get distracted. One time, Claude falls asleep at the wheel. They end up in the ditch several more times. 

The car is, and Claude means this with all due disrespect and snark, an absolute garbage fire, a heap of soon-to-be scrap metal. He says as much, and Jericho scowls warningly at him. 

"Watch your fucking mouth, twerp. She's imperfect, sure, but no car in history has performed as reliably for as long." Jericho thumps the roof of the car. It creaks and groans in protest, and Claude glances nervously at it. 

_ "That _ is because every other car in history was retired after the check engine light was on for more than three years!" 

"Oh, that?" says Jericho dismissively. "They don't mean it." 

"...They most certainly do!" 

"It's a suggestion!" 

"It is not!" 

But Claude doesn't know how to check the engine, and Jericho might but can't be bothered, so they are forced to leave well enough alone, at least in that department. Claude is left with plenty to complain about: the dust that billows every time they shift the seats, no matter that this is a daily occurrence, the mysterious squeaking noise that sounds for about a minute or so every time they start the engine and then desists  _ (she’s saying good morning,  _ Jericho insists), the windshield wipers that move independently of one another, the seemingly sourceless burning smells… the list goes on. After four sweltering days they figure out that the AC controls are inexplicably connected to the volume knob and the volume control is connected to the AC. A fun little side effect of this is that Claude and Jericho may choose between  _ either  _ cool air tempering the unbearable heat of the road and music so loud it vibrates in their ears, or tolerable volume and sweat-soaked days. The solution to this, Claude says irritably, is to not play music. Jericho won’t hear of it. 

The car has one shitty speaker that only works some of the time, and all they have to listen to is the small stack of CDs Jericho stuck in his pocket as an afterthought as he was leaving his apartment. It's a hodgepodge in the purest sense, each, in Claude's opinion, worse than the last, no matter what order you play them in, and mostly composed of obscure punk rock groups Jericho likes as much as Claude hates. When Jericho drives, Claude sits in stubborn, cross armed silence and plays no music. When Claude drives, he is subjected to both Jericho's DJing whims and his word perfect familiarity with each song. 

Jericho can't sing. 

Claude can't make him stop. 

Jericho leans out the window, seatbelt unbuckled no matter how many times Claude raises the issue, and yell-sings; songs about rebellion, about youth (about drugs, mostly), beats that thunder in the blood. Claude hunches over the wheel and contemplates homicide. 

  
  


After a week of this, Claude subconsciously hums along to the songs on Jericho's favorite album. He swears at Jericho whenever he catches himself. Most of the time, he doesn’t catch himself, and the days roll over and over one another like the pages of a book caught in a humid wind. The shitty kind of book you buy on a whim in a gas station, most likely. 

They pass through several big cities, mostly seen from a distance as their route keeps them on the highway. The highway itself gets more confusing in the vicinity of cities, as the lanes broaden and multiply to allow for commuters, bridges tangle and crisscross, and, to Claude's eyes at least, senseless intersections do their best to guide you cheerfully to your doom and make you feel stupid along the way. 

"We're not  _ lost,"  _ says Jericho stubbornly after a particularly long day. "We just… don't appear to be anywhere on this map." 

Claude briefly debates the pros and cons of strangling his traveling companion, and decides that he would most likely be caught if he did. 

Then again, Jericho is a wanted blank, so maybe he’d even be rewarded for getting rid of him. 

_ Then _ again, so is Claude. 

He takes a deep breath. 

“That is what lost  _ means!”  _

"Okay, okay, look," says Jericho. He turns the map around several times, squints at it, and Claude sincerely hopes he's just doing that to mess with him, because if Jericho has actually been looking at the map upside down his odds of getting strangled just got exponentially higher. "Just pull over, and we can figure this out." 

"I can't pull over, numbnuts, I'm in the middle lane of a 65 zone with no shoulder!" 

"Well, find a way to get over!" 

"What way?" 

_ "Some  _ way, man, I don't know!" 

"You're the one with the map!" 

Driving is a strange exercise in constant movement, complicated and meticulously structured. It provides all the stress of moving too fast to stop, with too many rules to actually feel freeing and not enough time to think before making turns that will lead you through mazes of unfamiliar streets. Though it derails them for over an hour, eventually they find a place to pull over, swap roles, and Claude gets them back on track with the sheer force of his rage. Barring their unceremonious, illegal, and nearly deadly return wherein Jericho mistakes an exit ramp for an entrance, sheer rage works like a charm. 

That's the first of many times they get turned around on the highway. It becomes routine. 

"I don't think you actually know the difference between left and right," Claude announces after a particularly confusing tangle of raised bridges. 

_ "You're  _ supposed to be  _ navigating,"  _ snaps Jericho. 

"I  _ am,  _ it's not my fault you can't follow a simple direction like  _ turn right!"  _

"We were in a left turn lane!" 

"Who got us there?!" 

It takes them the better part of the day to recover from that one wrong turn, including a new embarrassing low of asking for directions in a McDonald’s drive-thru. Highways are confusing. 

  
  


Claude is a morning person. Jericho is most definitely not. Claude likes to rouse him by yanking all of the blankets off of his bed. Jericho likes to start the day by bludgeoning him to the ground with the first item his hand lands on. Claude is lucky that it’s usually a pillow. The motel staff are lucky that they only ever stay one night. 

They are both, however, coffee people. Between the two of them they account for a significant boom in the sales of the small local coffee stands peppered along the highway. Tired more often than not, and stuck with one another, their movement can be tracked as a zigzagging line from each coffee stand to the next. 

"Black americano for me," Claude tells Jericho, every morning. And every morning, without fail, Jericho returns bearing some new variation on a drink so painfully sweet it sets Claude's teeth buzzing. He raises hell about this, of course, curses and wishes Jericho a hundred painful deaths, and… 

And enjoys the drinks tremendously. He doesn't actually  _ like  _ black coffee, that's the thing, the godforsaken, infuriating thing. Claude refuses to be the kind of person who orders a seventeen syllable coffee, but somehow Jericho knows. 

It is irritating beyond belief. 

No one else ever bothered to know that. 

  
  


After forty minutes in the same traffic jam, Claude gets out to yell at strangers. 

"Come on! Move it along! Why the  _ fuck  _ are we still here?" 

"Ask them why we're here!" Jericho yells helpfully through the glass. Claude absently flips him the bird as he picks his way through the stopped cars. 

_ Why we're here  _ turns out to be a huge fallen tree and a horrific three car wreck blocking the entirety of the road and stopping traffic dead for a mile behind. When Claude isn't looking, Jericho ducks under the yellow tape and hassles the cops for information. Ignoring Claude's frantic reprimands on his return, he reports that an ambulance is coming, the tree removal company has been called, and that everyone is going to have to sit tight for several hours. 

Several hours turns into half the day, and the duo resign themselves to the setback. Claude gets on the line with Blan Corp and reschedules their ferry tickets for the next day. Jericho  _ socializes.  _

There is a strange transient feel to the mile of stopped cars. It is almost town-like in the way they see people going about their lives, all held up by the same inconvenience, all rather aimless in that way that people become when their plans are unexpectedly derailed. It approaches the feeling of permanence, but veers away when it gets too close. They see RVs unfolding porches, people taking naps in the beds of trucks or sitting atop roofs with half finished paperbacks. Jericho wanders among them, doing the horribly tedious business of  _ small talk.  _ Making friends, learning stories- he tells Claude about them.  _ The redhead in the jeep, well, her best friend's got some terminal disease, could go at any moment, so she's trying to make it to the hospital before he does,  _ **_very_ ** _ upset about the delay. One of the RVs was supposed to catch the same ferry as us, just to get them to the right harbor, they're fishermen, see?  _ **_Oh_ ** _ and there's a  _ **_falcon trainer_ ** _ who was telling me all about their job, and the old guy with the ponytail, he's a traveling musician, plays the  _ **_accordion,_ ** _ and you'd never believe it but he knows that group from my favorite CD, even played one of the songs. And I met the couple from the 'just married' van and they're lovely girls, got a golden retriever with them…  _

"I don't care," Claude says, and means it. But Jericho leans through the window into the car, where Claude has been sulking since the start of the wait with an air of grim determination that says he can sulk all day and all night, if necessary. 

"Are you  _ jeeeeaaalous?"  _ he says teasingly, drawing out the syllables in a way that is very middle school of him. 

"What? Of course not!" snaps Claude. "That's ridiculous, what would I be jealous of?" 

Jericho's mouth forms an 'o'. "You totally are!" he cries, and he looks way too fucking delighted. "You're fucking  _ jealous  _ that I'm  _ hanging out  _ with other people. That I'm  _ talking  _ to people who aren't you. You've gotten  _ used  _ to me." 

“Quit feeding your ego! These past few hours without you have been the most relaxed I've felt since the whole trip began!" Claude shouts, feeling his blood rise. But Jericho just smirks at him and vanishes from the window. Claude hears the shift of his weight as he leans against the outside of the car. 

After a moment’s irritable silence, Claude props himself up to look out and says, grudgingly, "I just… don't  _ get it.  _ They're just people. Fucking  _ strangers.  _ Why do you give a shit about their lives?" 

Jericho shrugs. "They're interesting," he says. 

“Interesting.” 

“Yeah.” Jericho sets to the process of digging out and lighting a cigarette. "I mean" -and this is mumbled around the butt as he cups his hands over the lighter- "all of them living completely unique lives, unaffected by me, and me unaffected by them, except for this tiny moment when we've collided. And I have the chance to know who they are, just a little bit." 

Claude considers this. He props his arms on the window, looks down the row of cars and tries, really, he does, to see it this way. They are close to the end of the jam. People move gently, wafted by their own lives, for nearly a mile ahead. 

"But most of them are  _ boring,"  _ he finally says, frustration boiling over in his voice. "They're just… little fucking puppets, moving around and thinking they're important and dying, eventually." 

Jericho makes a face at him. "Well you have to talk to the boring ones to find the ones that matter, dipshit. 'Cause some of them are gonna." 

Claude frowns at him. 

"Sounds like sentimental mush to me," he says after a moment. 

Jericho scowls and blows a puff of smoke directly in his face. "The RV three lanes over and twelve cars up is doing an impromptu barbecue," he says as Claude hacks and coughs. "Thought you might want to know." 

And he wanders back up through the village of cars, in that careless, infuriating way of his. Claude watches him go. 

Jericho is what they call a  _ people person. _ Even Claude couldn't fail to notice it. There seems to be something to his bearing and energy that has strangers lining up to divulge their life stories. He is a fish in water among them. Charming, somehow. Personable. Easy to talk to. 

So maybe that's all there is to it- to the strange ease, almost (but not  _ quite) _ pleasure Claude finds in his company. Maybe Jericho is exerting his weird people influence and Claude is somehow not immune, and it is as simple as that. 

Because he's never bothered to do what Jericho's doing, go looking for the people who matter. He's never even  _ wanted  _ 'people who matter'. And people who don't  _ look  _ for companionship don't find it, so… so there is nothing more to consider. 

_ Half the day  _ turns into  _ overnight.  _ Claude does go to the barbecue, because he gets hungry and bored in the car. He meets the people Jericho was talking about and hates all of them, as he knew he would. He eats their food and drinks their wine and, surrounded by laughter and life, hunches down and anticipates the morning. 

Jericho seems to have a good time, though. 

Good for fucking Jericho. 

  
  


"Ice cream!" Jericho yells, and Claude is so startled he almost crashes the car again. 

“Fuck!” and then, as his heart rate settles again, “I thought you saw, like, a moose or something!” As they get farther north the wildlife gets bigger, gentle-looking deer replaced by ambling moose that look like they could step on the car without noticing. They’ve come close to hitting them several times already, and Claude has the nasty feeling that if they do, it will go worse for them than for the moose. 

“Nah, no moose,” says Jericho. “But there’s an ice cream stand up ahead! Let’s get ice cream!” 

Claude sighs. “What time is it?” 

“Uh- 3:45.” 

“And what day?” 

“Wednesday? Is this a trick question?” 

“Right.  _ Wednesday.  _ A full  _ day  _ behind schedule, thanks to the hangup yesterday.” 

“What does this have to do with-” 

“We don’t have  _ time  _ to stop for ice cream!” 

Jericho throws his hands up. “Come on!” he cries. “We don’t even have any real deadlines! The schedule was just a suggestion, nothing bad happens if we’re late.”    


Claude believes in schedules and numbers. They are some of the only things he believes in. He ignores Jericho and says, “If we drive into the night today and tomorrow and skip our planned checkpoint in the upcoming town, we can get back on track.” 

“A  _ five minute break  _ won’t hurt!” 

“Put your  _ fucking seatbelt  _ on and I’ll consider it.” He’s lying. 

Jericho knows it, too. He twists his lip obstinately. Claude catches this out of the corner of his eye, which is all the warning he gets before Jericho lunges across the divider and wrenches the wheel, hard, to the right. 

“What the fuck!” Claude wrestles back. The car veers wildly, and seems to be heading towards the ice cream exit for a moment before skidding on a puddle, turning a full 360 degrees, and bouncing into the roadside ditch. 

By a truly awful turn of fortune, Claude happens to be driving every time they spot a roadside ice cream stand. After the first fiasco, he refuses to even consider it, which doesn’t stop Jericho from yelling “Ice cream!” each time. 

He never does buckle his seatbelt, either. 

  
  


It has been two weeks, and Claude knows the choruses by heart. 

Not singing along turns out to be more work than just going with it, so while Claude drives and Jericho plays his favorite song on loop Claude sings the chorus. He must have been louder than he usually is, because as he sings he notices Jericho, Jericho who usually belts the words loud enough to be heard in the next county, falling silent. He glances over, meets the stare that is already on him. 

“What?” Claude demands. “You think I want to know the words to your shitty punk songs?” 

“It’s not that,” Jericho tells him. “I just don’t think I’ve ever… heard you sing. For real.” 

Claude scowls warningly and sinks down over the wheel. Jericho watches in bemusement as that familiar tension scoots its way up his shoulders and curls around his neck. All muscles bunched. Angry. “What the fuck are you trying to say? Because it’s your fault in the first place, so it’s not like you have the right to complain-” 

“I told you, it’s not like that.” Jericho laughs, suppressing a tiny but stubborn wave of fondness that bubbles up in his throat. “Actually, you have a nice voice. Really nice.” He pauses skeptically. “Surprisingly nice.” 

Jericho’s amusement heightens tremendously watching Claude try to figure out what, exactly, he should be offended about. Several distinct and recognizable flavors of rage wrestle across his face and he gets off to a few false starts, spluttering something about  _ shitty punk songs  _ and  _ not a fucking arts bitch  _ and  _ surprisingly  _ before lapsing into a confused, embarrassed silence and eventually muttering, “Thanks, I think?” 

Jericho has a lightbulb moment. “We should start a band!” 

Claude scowls again. “Aaaand you ruined it.” 

Jericho hits replay. 

  
  


“Get back in the car.”    


“Not until you apologize.” 

“Get in the stupid fucking car, this is ridiculous!” 

“I can do this all fucking day.”    


“You’re making us late! Aren’t _you_ the one who’s always worried about time?” 

“You can stop dragging this out right now.” 

Jericho sighs and puffs his cheeks out. “I hope another car comes by and hits you.” 

Noontime catches Claude walking along the narrow shoulder of the freeway with his arms crossed tight over his chest and his jacket slung over one of them as Jericho drives beside him at a walking pace, alternatively threatening and cajoling in his attempts to get him to give it up. 

“I’m not going to apologize for something so stupid when  _ you’re  _ throwing a hissy fit like this.”    


“It was my best jacket!” 

“You have like nine identical jackets!” 

Claude purses his lips. “Six,” he corrects mulishly. “And that was the  _ best  _ one.” 

“Just wash it! Coffee washes out!” 

“You wash it! You’re the one who fucked it up. But it’s hand wash only, and use cold water.” 

“Jesus fuck, fine!” Jericho throws up his hands, and Claude snaps, “hands on the wheel,” reflexively. 

“I’ll wash your stupid jacket if you get back in the car,” Jericho growls, glaring. 

“No.” 

_ “What?”  _

“I don’t trust you to do it right.”    


Jericho stares. He blinks. He shakes his head. 

“Okay, man, have it your way. Good luck getting to Meryl on foot.” 

Claude doesn’t register what he means until the car starts accelerating away. “Shit- fuck,  _ wait _ Jericho come back-” he breaks into a run after it, which is a personal low point, and he swears as he does. 

After a half hour or so, Jericho does let him catch up. Claude gets back in the car, sullen as they come, and for the next hour or so he stares out the window in icy silence and plans Jericho’s murder. 

He’ll need an alibi. It’s too late not to be seen with him, they’re not far from the last town. That means witnesses for sure, but maybe that’s a good thing- someone can vouch for his presence. If it comes to it, a little bribe couldn’t hurt, either. He can't convincingly pretend he didn't know Jericho at all, and he probably can't prevent the body from being found, but he can play the part of  _ horrified best friend  _ when it is. Maybe even go full black veil, drape himself dramatically over the corpse, it's a very Jericho thing to do- 

"Hey! Earth to Claude!" Jericho snaps his fingers in front of his face. "Did you hear what I said?" 

Claude shakes his head rapidly to bring himself back to reality. "What?" 

Jericho frowns at him. "What's got you so zoned out?" 

"I'm planning your murder," Claude tells him. Jericho blinks. 

“Oh, word?” 

“Yeah,” says Claude humorlessly. “Would you rather be stabbed or strangled? Hypothetically, I mean.”    


“It’s blowing up or nothing,” says Jericho, cracking a wide grin.   


“Are you kidding me?” Claude sniffs disdainfully. “That’s the least subtle way to go about this. No way.” 

“What happened to going out with a bang? I don’t  _ want  _ subtle.” 

“Well as your murderer-to-be, I absolutely do.” 

“Well  _ that  _ sounds like a you problem.” 

“Says the dead guy.”    


“My last request is that you kill me with an explosion. Would you ignore a guy’s last wishes? What a dick move.”   


“Well, I’m kind of a dick.” Claude taps his fingers mindlessly on the cupholder. “How’s this- when I get far enough from the scene of the crime, I’ll blow up your body. Fireworks, or something. ” 

_ “And  _ buy me fries before you kill me.”    


“Sure.” 

“Deal.” 

The car whizzes through the dusk. Claude’s mood is improved, somehow. 

  
  


Jericho likes sunsets. He points them out every day, and while Claude gripes that they are driving into the night, Jericho seems to take a lot of joy in it. That’s night owls for you. It’s a strange feeling, looking at that wash of colors through the glass of the windshield. Moving and not moving. Listening, and not understanding. Watching and… wondering. 

Claude scoffs loudly and marvels quietly, and this is what he marvels at: that Jericho can see a dozen sunsets, one every day, almost clockwork, and that, every day, odd perfect clockwork, he can point out what’s new, what’s beautiful. When Jericho talks about it Claude sees it, wonders he would have overlooked, like the way a pink cloud edged by gold forms a slight nimbus where it is neither and both, or the way a sky shot through with purple behaves almost like dripping water. It’s everyday, and everyday it’s new, and, because of Jericho, it is a small miracle. 

Claude keeps these thoughts to himself. He scoffs. He marvels. 

He takes to watching the sunrises alone before dragging Jericho from his slumber. It’s not the same. 

  
  


Jericho leaps back into the passenger seat after a provision run, supplies falling out of his arms and yelling "We have to go, we have to go right now!" 

Claude is turning the key before the door even closes, yelling back in a panic, "What, what happened?!" 

"A cop saw my face in the gas station!" Jericho is turned around in his seat, craning his neck furiously and peering behind them as the car peels out of the lot. 

“You mean your mask?” 

“No, my  _ face!”  _

Claude feels the familiar urge to commit homicide. "What the  _ fuck  _ could have possibly convinced you to take off your helmet?" 

"I wanted to see the candy aisle better, alright? I get that it was dumb  _ now,  _ no need to lecture me  _ now!"  _

Claude feels like screaming. Then he realizes that he has no reason to repress that urge, and he screams right into the wheel. Jericho jerks away. 

"Dude, what was that for?" 

"Shut up! Just- shut up. Are we being followed?" 

"Uhhh…" Jericho peers over the seat, then ducks quickly below it. 

"Would you believe me if I said no?" 

Claude takes a deep breath and lets it out. In the form of a barrage of swears, largely detailing the grievous bodily harm he is going to inflict upon Jericho as soon as he can stop driving. 

"Dude, I get it! Go!" 

Claude is going. He’s going as fast as he can and accelerating, pedal pressed against the floor and heart thudding painfully halfway down his throat. 

“There!” Jericho shouts, pointing, and Claude’s panic-mode brain follows the instruction instinctively, jerking the wheel hard and sudden to the right and thundering down an exit ramp.  _ If we aren’t caught for being blanks,  _ a part of him thinks deliriously,  _ we will be for breaking traffic laws.  _ He runs a few red lights with abandon born of fear as the sound of sirens gets louder behind them. 

And louder, and louder…

Claude's criminal record is spotless. Which isn't to say he and his face before him have led an innocent and law abiding joint life. He's just always been meticulous about covering up. Harder to conceal, though, are their identities as blanks. Their documents are fake- both of them only have licenses because of their faces, which may explain a thing or two. And Claude still has blank space showing, underneath his jacket sleeves. 

"Look," he says irritably. "They're faster than this wheezer car of yours. We may just have to let them catch us and then beat them up, kay?" 

_ “No,”  _ says Jericho, somehow firm and desperate at the same time, and Claude glances to the side and meets his unexpectedly wild eyes. 

“Jericho, it may be the only-” 

“No.” The force of it stops Claude’s words in their tracks. “Look, do you- do you know what happens to blanks who get caught by humans? Blanks who get _studied?”_ Jericho is struggling to control the note of rising panic in his voice, but Claude hears it clear as day. “Because I do. I’ve _seen_ it, and I- I just-” He shakes his head forcefully. “I _can’t_ be caught.” 

Jericho has got baggage. Claude knows this. He doesn’t know how much of it is Jericho and how much was Simon, but the end is the same. He's annoyingly tight-lipped about it, annoyingly glib, annoyingly unwilling to describe the sordid details of his tragic backstory no matter how Claude pesters him. But he's afraid of cops, afraid of small spaces, afraid of restraints, so Claude can take a guess. 

__

He thinks of the way Jericho has reacted when they've been pulled over- voice high and tight answering questions, fists clenched, body strung with tension like a bowstring. It's nothing on now, though, as Claude takes in a side of Jericho he's never seen-  _ panic.  _ His breath is coming in short bursts, he's, he's  _ shaking.  _ In his wild eyes Claude spots tears for the first time, which comes as a shock.  _ "Please,  _ get us out of here-" he's barely coherent "-Claude,  _ come on man,  _ please, I- I can't get caught-" 

__

Claude’s hands tighten involuntarily around the wheel. At hearing Jericho- fearless Jericho, perpetually unaffected Jericho- sound so scared, something protective twists itself into a hard knot in his chest. Though he barely understands, he makes a decision. 

__

“Then you won’t be.” 

__

“...Claude?” 

__

Claude’s eyes narrow. “Buckle up right now. This is quite literally your last warning.” 

__

Jericho, not expecting it, is thrown flat back with the force of the car's acceleration. He grips the base of his seat and watches, for there is nothing else to do, as the car tears off through the unfortunate nameless city they've committed themselves to, closely pursued, all hairpin turns, all screeching rubber and Claude's angry locked jaw and-  _ yes-  _ sirens fading in the background, still in pursuit but losing ground as the speed dial on Jericho's run down old car ticks up and up, 100, 110, struggling and coughing with 120 but Claude doesn't let up, and- there! 

__

"They've stopped!" Jericho cries, peering out the back window. "Nice going, man, they've given up!" 

__

"Cool!" Claude yells back. "I think I've just figured out why!" 

__

"I think I've just figured out why" is as much warning as Jericho gets before the car sails off the edge of a cliff. 

__

  
  


__

The thing about driving over the edge of a cliff is that you shouldn't. 

__

Here are some facts about driving over the edge of a cliff: 

__

A seatbelt will not help you if you drive over the edge of a cliff. 

__

99.9% of people feel immediate regret after driving over the edge of a cliff. 

__

Your other problems, such as the shitty speakers and broken AC in your traveling companion's beat up wheezer of a car, seem immediately less significant having driven over the edge of a cliff. 

__

No matter how many times you have plotted to kill said traveling companion, you weren't actually gonna  _ do it,  _ and you can't help but feel, well, a little put out, a little distressed, maybe even offended, at the unnecessary stupidity of your mutual demise. 

__

It doesn't help when  _ you're  _ the sensible one,  _ you're  _ supposed to be the voice of reason,  _ you're  _ the one who, if asked no less than a week ago, would have said that there was nothing in the world that could compel you to such lengths of madness. You have time to think that if you do survive, Jericho is never going to shut the fuck up about this one. 

__

Claude has time to think this and not much else as they plummet through the open air. It is worth noting, as a point of order, that all that goes through Jericho's head in the fall is "huh, I didn't think he had it in him" and the detached observation that their screams are harmonizing. 

__

They hit water. It is a river, and this is their saving grace. 

__

After that it gets fuzzy. Claude hits his head, or something, scrabbles at his seatbelt with leaden fingers, fighting pressure all around, fighting the cotton in his skull, fighting dreamily, almost not fighting at all, against the lazy swarm of black dots that swim insistently across his eyelids. Fighting, sinking, sinking… 

__

And then strong hands wrenching open the driver side door and disengaging his seatbelt in a heartbeat, hands on him, hands gripping his bicep and ribs hard enough to bruise and dragging him up, up, until the black swarm scatters with a punch of breath. Cold air, too bright sun, and someone holding him, someone kicking desperately, kicking water like it will save their life (lives). 

__

The world swoops sickeningly and he almost blacks out again, but-  _ there,  _ silt under his feet, a desperate scrabble for purchase, and the arm around him gives a final heave and dumps him hard on a bank of packed mud. 

__

He rolls onto his side and coughs up what seems like a river's worth of slimy water, then lies there for an untold amount of time, wheezing and trying to force the world to resolve itself into something other than a vibrating assortment of colorful lines. 

__

Which, eventually, it does. Shock fades, adrenaline lowers, breathing steadies, and Claude has enough energy to push himself into a sitting position and begin processing what just happened. 

__

His first thought is for Jericho. His second thought is shock at this, that he even cares. His third thought drives the other two clean from his mind, because at that point his brain catches up with his eyes, and he notices the body lying corpse-still at his side. 

__

There is a minute where Jericho doesn't move, and the unexpected surge of panic knocks the wind right out of him. Claude scrambles to his side, "Jericho?" senselessly shaking his shoulder, willing him to snap out of it,  _ "Jericho!"  _ His breaths grow short as he checks for a pulse, hands shaking,  _ there!  _ There. Tiny, fluttery tapping under Claude’s fingers, the weak pulses of a strained heart. 

__

Medicine isn’t Claude’s strong suit. He frantically tries to remember what you’re supposed to do with a near-drowned person- make them cough? Yes, yes, to get the water out of their lungs, to make them  _ breathe- _ he pumps Jericho’s chest a few times, willing him to open his eyes, to live,  _ live- _

__

Which he does, with a jolt and a gasp that startle Claude so badly he falls backwards, loses his balance, and lands on his back in the mud again. Jericho, for his part, curls onto his side and heaves up buckets of river water- more than Claude’s lungs contained, and he stays slumped on his side after it stops, facing away from Claude and looking decidedly weak. 

__

“Hey,” says Claude hoarsely, propping himself up on his arms, “you okay?” 

__

Jericho mumbles something incoherent. 

__

“What? Jericho!” 

__

“I said-” With great difficulty, Jericho rolls over so that he’s looking at Claude, who notices with a start that his companion is grinning, “What the  _ fuck?”  _

__

“What.” Claude blinks rapidly a few times, uncomprehending. “Wh- what are you grinning about?”    


Jericho’s grin widens. He lets out a few hiccuping giggles. 

__

_ “What?”  _

__

“You drove my car over a cliff. Into a river.” Jericho beams right in his face. “I mean, I knew you were the worst, but this is a whole new level of suck!” He cackles madly, several times. “You. You  _ suck!”  _

__

It takes Claude a moment to comprehend, to make the mental switch from being scared for Jericho’s life to being put upon and angry. He stares at Jericho in shock. 

__

“You- how can you- you’re fucking unbelievable, you know that-” 

__

But Jericho is laughing, laughing so hard he is almost crying. Claude thumps him on the arm a few times, "you asshole  _ take this seriously,"  _ and Jericho seems to be trying but each time he catches a glimpse of Claude's furious face he bursts back into helpless wheezing. It’s a little bit contagious, and despite his best efforts Claude lets out a few snorts, and eventually leans his head back on the muddy ground, grinning in that way that only people at the very end of their rope can pull off. 

__

“Oh god,” he says. “We’re doomed. We’re so dead.” 

__

Jericho nods furiously, still breathless with laughter. “Absolutely fucked,” he agrees. 

__

And it’s so damn  _ funny  _ that for a while all they can do is lie on the dirty riverbank, letting floating trash swirl about their feet, and laugh about it. It is a bit hysterical, a bit adrenaline-fueled, a bit impossible. Claude tries and fails to wrap his head around what just happened, and each time falls back into helpless snickering. It is better, at any rate, than really facing it. They should be panicking, or maybe regrouping by now, reacting to the calamity of it in  _ some way,  _ but instead they lie there and laugh. They laugh for a long time. It seems the only option. 

__

  
  


__

Later, the loss catches up with him. 

__

“That was my  _ car,”  _ Jericho moans. “I- I mean, she was practically family! She was the only family I  _ had.  _ You drove the only family I had off of a cliff.”    


“Quit being so dramatic. We’re alive, aren’t we?” Claude has recovered from the hysteria as well. 

__

“Three fell into that river. Two made it out.” 

__

“You’re blowing this way out of proportion.” 

__

“She was the best car in the world. Owned her for sixteen years!” 

__

“Sixteen- holy shit, let’s be real, she-  _ it  _ wasn’t gonna last much longer anyway!” 

__

Jericho gasps. 

__

_ “You take that back.”  _

__

“No! It’s true! The only thing holding that car together was willpower, and I’m not sure whose! It’s amazing it got us this far at all.”    


“She would have gotten us farther if _someone_ hadn’t _driven her off a cliff!”_

__

“I didn’t  _ have  _ another  _ option.”  _

__

“I want an apology.” 

__

“Apolo- you were having a  _ panic attack!”  _

__

“And you decided you’d make it better by  _ driving my car off a cliff!”  _

__

“On  _ accident!  _ And it  _ worked,  _ didn't it?"

__

_ "Bitch,  _ how do you  _ accidentally-”  _

__

“Look,” and Claude crosses his arms and glares at the floor. “I wasn’t  _ trying  _ to total your stupid car, alright? You just- you  _ said  _ you had to get out of a situation, and you were really freakin’ out about it, and I- I-” 

__

Clarity dawns. “Were you…” And Jericho laughs incredulously. “Were you  _ worried  _ about me?” 

__

“Wh-  _ no!”  _ That’s the  _ no  _ of a guilty man. Jericho grins. 

__

“You were! You  _ so  _ were.” 

__

Claude sputters, finds nothing to say, and settles for a sullen glare. “You owe me,” he mumbles. 

__

_ “I  _ owe  _ you?  _ The way I remember it, you  _ drove my car over a cliff  _ and then I  _ saved your life.”  _

__

“Then I saved yours, though! On the riverbank when you almost drowned.” 

__

“Saving  _ you!”  _

__

“But we’re even!” 

__

“Except for the  _ car  _ you  _ drove over a cliff into a river!”  _

__

“Whatever,” snaps Claude, out of retorts. “I don’t have to deal with this.”    


They pass a tense, mostly silent night, go to their respective beds, switch off the light. It is fifteen or so minutes later, when Claude is nearly asleep, that he hears Jericho mumble, almost inaudibly, “Thank you for getting me out of there.” 

__

For a moment he’s too blindsided to reply, but… 

__

But for the first time in his life, Claude takes the olive branch. 

__

“Thank you for saving my life.” He’s just as quiet with it. And then, after a moment, because he can blame it on sleeplessness if he needs to, “I’m sorry I drove your car over a cliff.” 

__

“You better be, dipshit.” 

__

“Asshole.” 

__

And after that, sleep. 

__

__

Claude moves  _ hitchhiking  _ right to the very top of the very long list of things he hates. 

__

“Hey.  _ Psst.  _ Hey,  _ Jericho!”  _

__

Jericho glances at him, then sighs and leans over.  _ “What?”  _ _  
_

“I think we should get out.” 

__

“What, are you kidding me? We just got in.”    


“You- _keep your damn voice down, Jeri-cho!”_

__

They are seated side by side in the backseat of a generous stranger’s van, only right now Claude keeps noticing odd little details about it, suspicious stains, out-of-place looking tools,  _ “Jericho,  _ he has an  _ ax! _ This whole thing is suspect as hell.” 

__

“Doug? He’s a delight,” says Jericho, nodding at their driver and barely bothering to lower his voice. “No way in  _ hell  _ am I walking the rest of the way.” 

__

“It beats getting  _ ax-murdered!”  _

__

“We are  _ not  _ gonna be ax-murdered. You’re just being paranoid.” 

__

_ “Famous  _ last words.” 

__

“Yall like music?” Doug interrupts, cutting off Jericho’s retort. 

__

“No,” says Claude sullenly. But Jericho’s face lights up. 

__

“How do you feel about punk?” 

__

Doug scratches his side methodically. “Oh. I figure anything goes.” 

__

“It most certainly doesn’t!” Claude objects angrily. “Besides,” and he can’t help sounding a little smug, “We  _ lost  _ all of our punk albums,  _ didn’t we,  _ Jericho?” Claude thinks it was probably the only good thing to come of the whole  _ cliff _ fiasco. 

__

Life is about to deal him yet another losing hand as Jericho pulls a cracked CD case from his jacket and says brightly,  _ “Almost  _ all.” 

__

Claude’s jaw drops. “You still  _ have one?”  _

__

“That’s right!” 

__

“How?!” 

__

“Rescued it from the car right before grabbing you.” 

__

“You rescued- what the  _ fuck  _ are your priorities?” 

__

Jericho has the audacity, the god damn nerve, to wink at him as the first song starts up. Claude sticks his hands in his pockets and leans against the window in a determined grump. 

__

“I hate punk,” he grumbles. 

__

Doug squints at him in the rearview mirror. “Where’d you find this here party pooper?” 

__

Jericho thinks that’s hilarious. 

__

“Oh, dug him up somewhere. You know how it is, the world is littered with lost souls. This one’s a bit of a dud, though.”    


“I’m not a _lost soul,”_ snaps Claude. “If you must know, we’re coworkers. And if I could choose any other partner, I would.” 

__

“I see what you mean,” says Doug, ignoring him. “A gloomy attitude to dampen anyone’s nice time.”    


“Up yours!” 

__

“Exactly!” Jericho looks delighted. “Do you know, he wakes me up at the crack of dawn every day by yanking the blankets off my bed?”    


“What does that have to do with anything?” 

__

“Seems like the type to keep his socks in alphabetical order.”    


“Oh he _is,_ he absolutely is. _Such_ a drag.” 

__

“Would you cut it out? I can  _ hear  _ you two, you know!” 

__

“Hey, you want a hit?” 

__

So Jericho and Doug spend the afternoon smoking and making fun of Claude, which leaves him thinking almost longingly of the days of being cooped up alone in a car with Jericho. It doesn’t help that Doug ends up being the most genial of all the drivers that pick them up. After the fourth one drops them off, Claude says, “So I suppose you want to tell me she wasn’t a cult leader?”    


“Nah,” says Jericho, staring after her retreating car as he fumbles for a cigarette. “She was _definitely_ a cult leader.”   


“We need a car,” says Claude firmly. 

__

“We have no money.”    


“I don’t- I don’t care, you hear me? We _can’t_ do this for the rest of the trip. We’ll just- we’ll just get Blan Corp to help us out.” 

__

Jericho snorts. “Good luck, dude.” 

__

  
  


__

Acquiring a new car is a disaster on every level. At this point, Claude thought he had a pretty decent handle on the level of insanity that traveling with Jericho necessitates. Jericho manages to surprise him. 

__

“Uh. Um. Is that a motorcycle?” 

__

“Yeah! Pretty sweet, right?” 

__

“Did… did you buy that with the stipend blan corp gave us for a new car?” Bureaucrats hate giving away money. Acquiring that stipend had taken two and a half hours in a phone booth delivering increasingly creative threats to a string of lower level employees trained precisely in deflecting requests for funding, while Jericho leaned on the outside of the booth, smoked, and occasionally gave Claude a thumbs up when his yelling permeated the glass windowpanes. Mikiah Kelman cannot possibly be worth all this trouble. But he'll also be damned if he lets them stop now. 

__

Jericho pats the motorcycle’s glinting front and grins. “I sure did. This baby is the latest thing on the market- the seller had no idea what she was worth. She was practically free.”    


Claude grits his teeth. “Sure- if _free_ means _two thousand and five hundred dollars.”_

__

“Hey- compared to what she’s worth, this is a total steal!” 

__

“Well, you better enjoy it now, because we’re selling her back.”    


Jericho looks mortally wounded at the thought. “What? No way! She’s perfectly reliable- she can definitely make it to Meryl, and more besides!” 

__

The familiar urge to scream bubbles in his throat like an old friend _.  _ “Jericho, we  _ both  _ have to get to Meryl!” 

__

“There’s room for two.”    


Claude stares. He blinks. He shakes himself. 

__

“A, no. B, that’s illegal. C, no. D, I don’t think you’d even notice if I fell off the back. E, no. F, do you even know how to ride one of those things? G,  _ no!”  _

__

“Of course I know how to ride!” insists Jericho, incensed. He mumbles something, quietly. Claude cups an ear. 

__

“Sorry, what was that?” 

__

“I said  _ in theory.”  _ He has the decency to look slightly embarrassed. 

__

“As in, you’ve never done this before?”    


“Well- well how hard can it be?”   


“We’re selling it back!” 

__

Jericho gasps and braces himself protectively in front of the motorcycle. “No!” 

__

_ “Yes!”  _

__

_ “No!”  _

__

The argument lasts a good forty minutes, and ends with the compromise that Jericho will let Claude sell the motorcycle back if Claude lets Jericho take one joyride on it first. 

__

“It’s  _ not  _ a ‘joyride’, okay? It’s a test drive if anything. You better not damage it.” 

__

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.” Jericho waves a dismissive hand. 

__

“Don’t give me that! Jericho, I’m serious, not a  _ scratch.”  _

__

“Whatever.”    


“We still have to sell it back.”   


“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’ll be fine.” 

__

So in hindsight it shouldn't have been a surprise when Jericho promptly hit the curb wrong, went flying through the air, bounced painfully along the pavement, and sent the motorcycle careening into a solid oak. Tree and bike go up in flames instantly as Jericho clambers to his feet. 

__

There is a long moment of silence. Gawking silence. Processing silence. Despairing silence. 

__

Claude stares at the smoking wreck of the two-thousand dollar motorcycle. 

__

“Are we above stealing a car?” 

__

Silence. Smoke. 

__

“No,” Jericho decides. 

__

  
  


__

“Why do you know how to hotwire a car?” Claude says as Jericho eases onto the highway in their new ride. 

__

“Oh, you never know what’s gonna come in handy.” 

__

Claude blinks. He scowls. 

__

“I absolutely hate that it  _ did  _ come in handy.” 

__

Jericho grins as Claude slumps against the window, arms crossed, and says, "For the record, I blame you  _ entirely _ for everything that's gone wrong." 

__

Jericho stares at him incredulously. "You fucking what?" 

__

"Watch the road." 

__

"No, there's just, there's no way you're serious." 

__

_ "Watch the road!"  _

__

"Of course I am," Claude continues as Jericho gets them back into their lane. "Let's face it, it never would have been like this if I was traveling alone. I am punctual to a fault and I have literally never  _ seen  _ this much chaos in my life." 

__

Jericho snorts. "Bitch, if you'd been traveling alone, you would have wrecked week one and not known what to do." 

__

"What? How would you know?" 

__

"Uh, you're incompetent? I know you well enough to know  _ that."  _

__

"Wh- like  _ you're  _ one to talk!" 

__

_ "I've  _ never driven a car off a cliff!" 

__

"That was one time, and it was to  _ save  _ your sorry ass, so you could try a little gratitude!" 

__

"Gratitude? We almost drowned!" 

__

"Yeah, and  _ that  _ was your fault!" 

__

"How?" 

__

"Well, I never would have done that alone." 

__

Jericho opens his mouth to retort, then hesitates, and then, to Claude's chagrin, starts snickering over the wheel. 

__

"What?" Claude demands. 

__

"Nothing, nothing. It's just-" and Jericho shakes his head "-we make each other so much worse, don't we?" 

__

Claude has to admit he's onto something there. He allows himself one rueful grin. "God, we do." He pauses. He shakes his head. “We  _ so  _ do.” 

__

"Maybe neither of us would have made it alone." 

__

Claude shakes his head. Glances at the hilly terrain streaking past. 

__

"’S fine. We can be awful together.” 

__

Jericho grins. He laughs. 

__

Claude laughs too. 

__

  
  


__

_ Awful together  _ becomes something of a watchword.  _ Awful together  _ is what they are when they get stuck in that bog, or chased by a mama moose, or when they leave the parking brake on on the freeway and get so distracted arguing about it they drift off course and lose an entire day. Awful together when they puncture their tire, and every single time they’re lost, and they agree they are pretty  _ awful together  _ when Jericho loses control of the car and drives all the way through a restaurant, leaving broken windows and crushed furniture in their wake. 

__

They continue bringing out the worst in one another. At this point, there is no justification for how bad at this they are. Claude has never been any sort of team player, he’d be the first to admit, but he’s never been as incompatible with anyone as he is with Jericho. Jericho says he  _ is  _ a team player, but “not with a moron like you, I mean,  _ holy shit.”  _

__

Claude has never been this aggravated in his entire life, which is saying quite a lot, considering he’s lived that life on the spectrum of ‘irritated’ to ‘incoherently enraged’. It is… well… awful. Awful together. 

__

And a little funny. He recalls laughing on the banks of the river, the biggest calamity they’ve faced, and his stomach twists oddly. 

__

_ Awful together  _ is different than awful alone, and something about it works. He can’t point to what. He can’t even point out why he thinks so. By all accounts, they’ve made more mistakes than he thought possible. But… 

__

But he laughed on the shore of that river, and he doesn’t know why. 

__

  
  


__

Three weeks, and Claude knows Jericho’s favorite songs word-perfect. He’s even gotten used to them, begun to associate them with sweet coffee and cheap motels and petty bickering, all things that are somehow, senselessly, enjoyable. He’s not used to that, this  _ enjoying someone’s company,  _ and he aches a little to think that it had to be Jericho, Jericho who likes  _ everyone.  _ Jericho who smokes and speeds and listens to punk groups, Jericho with the piercings and the carelessness, Jericho who is every existent frustrating quality rolled into one loudmouthed asshole. 

__

_ (Jericho who saved him from drowning, who learned his coffee order, who says he has a nice voice; Jericho who likes sunsets and ice cream and laughing.)  _

__

When he thinks of how he’d felt on the river, that- that  _ moment  _ when Jericho hadn’t moved, he feels a tiny pang of a sort he isn’t used to. Jericho could have died. He could have  _ died.  _ And it makes Claude realize that, in fact, he much prefers Jericho alive. The knowledge sits in his throat like a marble, foreign and a bit painful. 

__

But Jericho is alive now, lazily smoking out the window as the world rolls by. Claude considers him. 

__

"Hey, Jericho. Why do you like this so much?" 

__

Claude is driving, and Jericho, as usual, has taken this as an invitation to play the only surviving album on loop. He stops ‘singing’ to consider the question. 

__

“You mean the music?” 

__

“If you can call it that.” Claude doesn’t like music. He especially doesn’t like punk. He doesn’t like much, when it comes to it. But he’s just beginning to come to grips with the fact that he may-  _ may-  _ like Jericho. So… “What’s the… fuckin… the draw, or whatever?” 

__

To Claude’s surprise, Jericho has quite a detailed answer. He has clearly been _listening,_ not just hearing, a fact that is, for some reason, unexpected. He briefly goes over the consistent brilliance of the basslines, the way the musicians seem to meld into one entity- _seamless,_ is the word he uses- the invigorating effect of the vocals and guitar and the way the drummer turns rhythm into a living thing. Claude listens, brow furrowed, mostly in silence save the obligatory rude comment when he sees an opening. A lot of it goes over his head- he’s heard the album a thousand times, and he’s never heard _that._

__

“But mostly,” says Jericho, “it’s about the passion. I mean, if you really listen, it’s  _ there  _ in everything they do.” 

__

“It’s just anger,” says Claude, wrinkling his nose. “Just nineteen year olds yelling.” And Jericho shakes his head. 

__

“You don’t get it. You don’t get it because anger is the only kind of passion you’re familiar with. But these guys do  _ everything  _ with the same fire that you have when you’re trying to prove me wrong.” Claude chuckles a little at that one, uncertain. “They love and hate drink and fuck and fight and whatever else and then they sing about it and you can hear how much they  _ give a shit.  _ They give a shit about  _ everything.”  _

__

Claude squints at the road. He thinks about that one. 

__

“I can’t fucking imagine.”    


“Yeah, well, you don’t give a shit about _anything.”_ Jericho turns the volume up. “That’s probably why you don’t like punk.” 

__

  
  


__

Jericho’s affinity for music comes back in another unexpected manner. One of the motels has a piano in the lobby, which is how Claude finds out that Jericho knows how to play. He's surprised, and a little impressed, though he keeps it under wraps. He feels less impressed when Jericho starts playing one of the tracks from that wretched album.  It wasn't written with piano in mind, that tune, and it isn't flattering for the instrument or the song. Claude complains about it. Jericho complains right back. Eventually, their standard snippy argument dies for lack of fuel. 

__

"I can show you a few tunes," Jericho offers. 

__

Claude scowls. But he sits down beside him on the bench and Jericho shows him chopsticks. It gives him a lot of trouble, chopsticks does. More trouble than it rightfully should. Jericho smirks as he gets increasingly worked up. 

__

"You don't need to master it all in one go," he says placatingly. 

__

"I hate this. I hate  _ you,"  _ Claude says. But he doesn't get up until he can play it with his eyes closed. Perfect as perfect can be. 

__

  
  


__

Jericho leans over Claude’s shoulder as he sits at the blocky motel desk. 

__

“What are you writing?” 

__

Claude jerks away irritably, but holds up the paper. 

__

“It’s a list of all the things that never happened to me until  _ you  _ crashed into my life and set it on fire.” Claude looks at him pointedly. “I’ve been keeping track throughout the trip.”    


“Show me that.” Jericho grabs it out of his hands, ignoring his protests. “Asked for directions in a McDonald’s drive thru… drove the wrong way on the highway… drove a car into a river… kay, well, that last one was your fault.” Something catches his eye. “Why are there a bunch of tally marks next to _near death experience?”_

__

“Guess.” 

__

“Ah.” 

__

Inspired by The List, Jericho starts a  _ times we've crashed the car  _ counter. 

__

"You shouldn't be proud of that," says Claude irritably. 

__

“What I think we can stand to be a little proud of,” says Jericho, “is that the journey only took us three vehicles.” 

__

“That’s two vehicles too many, you cretin!”    


_“Not_ when you consider that we crashed _thirty-four_ times!” 

__

Claude’s retort dies on his lips, soundlessly impressed. That’s more than even he was expecting. 

__

“Wait, you’re sure? Thirty-four?”    


“Positive.”   


“Show me.”   


Far from bringing the number down, after looking over the list Claude is able to recall two more crashes that Jericho forgot, bringing the total up to thirty-six. 

__

“This,” says Claude despondently,  _ “this  _ is pathetic.” 

__

“This is  _ awful together,”  _ says Jericho cheerfully, and keeps the counter handy in his pocket for the rest of the journey. 

__

  
  


__

Jericho falls asleep before him one day. This is in and of itself an unusual occurrence- Jericho is a night owl, and though Claude doesn’t know what time he usually gets to bed, he suspects that his companion doesn’t sleep much at all. But they’d had a long day, during which Claude had fallen asleep in the passenger seat and Jericho, without his navigator, had driven them sixty miles in the wrong direction and had to deal with the freak goose congregation and the traffic jam it had caused. That, combined with the ridiculously early start to the day, had Jericho passing out the instant his head hit the shitty motel pillow, leaving Claude to watch the sunset alone and contemplate the past few weeks. 

__

They’re getting close. Meryl is a few days out on the map, marking the encroaching end to this strange, maddening piece of their lives. Claude thinks he’s talked to Jericho more in the past month than he’s ever talked to anyone in his life. It’s been awful, of course. But Jericho has surprised him more than once. He’d surprised him by saving him from drowning, and by some of the things he’d said, and by some of the ways he handled crises (though it can’t honestly be said that either of them is a master in that area). But there’s something to be said for their general incompetence. It’s hard not to feel a certain level of camaraderie with someone when you’ve faced so many disasters down together. 

__

They’re not exactly  _ friends.  _ That must be said. At least, they don’t seem to be. Not from what Claude has observed to be common in other sets of friends. But they’re… they’re something. Maybe. They’re  _ awful together,  _ which is still  _ together.  _ And it’s scary.  _ Giving a shit  _ is really, really fucking scary. 

__

He’d always been the only thing in the world, really, other people a slurry of words that aren't important and movements without purpose, faceless, any one indistinguishable from any other. There was Claude, in the category of  _ people who matter,  _ and everyone else, a greyscale crowd on the other side of a yawning, indifferent divide.  _ People who don’t.  _ More than always being alone, he’d always been comfortable that way. He’s seen the hollowness, the great lack, in the eyes of those who describe loneliness, seen it and found it alien. 

__

There must have been a piece of Claude, the original one, the human one, that wondered what it was like to place somebody else in the  _ people who matter  _ category, because when he was so very young, just a face and blank space, scared, confused, hiding and watching normal people live normal lives, before the revulsion kicked in there was only a subtle kind of wonder. In his unformed innocence he thought maybe he’d remember feeling like that, before it was buried in layers of arrogance and disgust. And he never thinks on it, anymore, but he’s thinking about it now. 

__

Because he’s never fucking known this, this  _ us against the world  _ feeling, the terrifying faith that someone else will stay with him. And he thinks he has a name for it, a word he’s been hearing all his life. He can’t say it. He can’t even think it, really, because it’s never been  _ his  _ and now it might be and what is he supposed to do with that? 

__

For now he sticks with  _ Jericho matters.  _ He doesn’t have to outline why. Jericho matters and that’s  _ incomprehensible  _ and he’s  _ scared  _ of it. Jericho, his antithesis, Jericho who values everything Claude loathes,  _ matters.  _

__

He doesn’t say a word of this, of course. He says, “You’re the worst,” and Jericho smiles like he knows. 

__

  
  


__

When they do break down, it is impossible to prove that it was anyone's fault. This is not for lack of trying. 

__

“Is it a flat?” 

__

“No. Is the tank empty?” 

__

“It’s full, we filled it earlier!” 

__

“Yeah, I remember! So what’s the damn problem?”    


“I don’t know, but the hood is smoking.” 

__

“What does that mean?” 

__

“Haven’t the foggiest.” 

__

It was inevitable, really, that they  _ would  _ break down. Everything else that could go wrong has, and so it is with grumpy resignation that they push the car off the road and agree to find a mechanic in the morning. Naturally it is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, and Claude reflects that he pictured something a hell of a lot more glamorous when the words  _ 'high end blank research'  _ floated into play. 

__

They dine on grapes and stale tortilla chips and the stillness feels beyond strange after nearly four weeks of constant movement, the ceaseless push to get to the next stop so they can get to the next one so they can… 

__

…break down and sit side by side in the thick night looking at the cold stars. 

__

Or rather, Jericho looks at the stars and Claude looks at Jericho. He can’t help it. He normally seems so flippant, so carefree and intentionally irritating, but Claude has seen the moments when he isn’t. Sometimes it’s fear, struggling right under the surface of his teasing eyes, that distress that evokes strange unfathomable protectiveness in Claude. And sometimes, in stiller moments, it’s a terrible, defeated sadness. Like he’s somewhere else entirely. 

__

He looks that way now. Sad, and strangely small, with his chin propped on his arms and his arms propped on his knees, all folded up under the big sky, eyes a million miles away. 

__

And then he comes back, somehow, shifts and starts seeing the real world and looks over at Claude, careless again. Grabs a handful of chips. 

__

“So,” he says, by way of launching them abruptly into conversation. “What do you think we’re gonna find in the jungles?” 

__

“At this rate,” says Claude sourly, “I’m honestly not even sure we’re going to make it that far.” 

__

“Oh, come on,” says Jericho. “Don’t be defeatist. We’ve just had a few setbacks, is all.”    


“A whole _week’s_ worth of setbacks,” counters Claude. The trip was supposed to take them three weeks, but the time spent getting lost, driving into rivers, and hitchhiking had added up. 

__

“So what?” snips Jericho. “It’s not like this Kelman guy is waiting for us or anything.” 

__

“If he has any  _ sense,”  _ grumbles Claude, “He won’t want anything to do with us.” 

__

“You’re being a cynic again,” Jericho reminds him. “Just don’t tell him about the cliff.”    


“Yeah.” 

__

“Or the exit ramp. Or the moose. Or-” 

__

“Or this, probably.” Claude punctuates the statement with a glare. 

__

“Oh, breaking down isn’t so bad,” says Jericho carelessly. “My old car- you know, the one you drove into a river?”    


“I know the one,” Claude grumbles, not in the mood. 

__

“Right. She used to break down all the time. Nothing a little care couldn’t fix.” 

__

“Really? How come you can’t apply a bit of  _ care  _ and fix this one?” 

__

“It’s an unfamiliar car, man, it doesn’t work that way!”    


“Well, _I’ve_ never broken down before. Because _I_ fucking _assess risks_ before throwing myself into shitty situations.” 

__

Jericho smirks. “Okay, mister risk-assessor, you better add breaking down to that list of yours, then.” 

__

“Go right to hell,” says Claude, but he digs the list out anyway and scribbles it down. He eats chips and looks at the stars and Jericho tells some disastrous story of a time his face broke down when he was thirteen and it wasn’t even legal for him to be behind the wheel. It leaves Claude gaping. 

__

“Holy shit. You really mean it when you say  _ could be worse.”  _

__

“Usually.” Jericho grins at him, the way he grins when he’s about to say something mean. “Driving over a cliff is pretty bad.”    


Claude hesitates, then smirks. “Have I one-upped you, then?” 

__

“Yes,” Jericho deadpans. “Congratulations, Claude. You’re officially a worse driver than I was when I was thirteen.” 

__

Claude groans. “I wish I was literally anywhere else.” 

__

The grapes and chips eventually run out, and though Jericho looks perfectly content to crouch in the grass smoking, sleep creeps up on Claude and he passes out in the backseat. Many hours later, Jericho heads the same way, but his companion’s sleeping form gives him pause. 

__

Claude looks about six years younger when he sleeps, brow uncreased, anger smoothed away. Jericho finds himself astonished by the contrast. He has to wonder if Claude ever feels this way when he’s awake- at ease. Peaceful. An eternally angry mind can’t be an easy one to live in. 

__

The thought makes him strangely melancholy, alone like that under the bright stars. Jericho concentrates on breathing until he, too, feels calm and still. He falls asleep in the passenger seat, even though they’d fought over the backseat earlier that evening. Not worth pushing the matter, he thinks. Not worth moving his companion, and risking rousing him from this tranquility Jericho has never seen before. 

__

Not worth a fight, in the end, and so the night passes. 

__

  
  


__

In the morning they call back to their hitchhiking segment by standing at the side of the road and waving their arms until, by a ridiculous turn of rare good fortune, they land someone who knows enough about cars to get them up and running at least as far as the next city. 

__

"You did a number on this one," the stranger chuckles, leaning over the hood. 

__

"You should see the smoldering wrecks of the first two," Claude mutters sourly. 

__

The car clanks and rattles all the way to the city, which is out of their way but necessary if they want to make it as far as Meryl. The mechanic gives them a bill, Claude argues it down. The car is fixed, the route is sorted, life goes on. 

__

It turns out Jericho is perfectly  _ capable  _ of driving at a reasonable speed, staying in one lane, and hitting nothing. If anything, the revelation makes Claude angrier. 

__

“So you  _ just  _ weren’t trying, then.” 

__

“Correct. What’s  _ your  _ excuse for sucking?” 

__

Jericho is so used to fighting while driving at this point that he counters Claude’s jab to the neck without looking. The car rattles onward. Claude digs his nails into his arms and prays that it doesn’t fall to pieces before they reach Meryl. 

__

  
  


__

Three weeks, six days. The list stands thusly: 

__

_ Went the wrong way on the freeway  _

__

_ Flat tire  _

__

_ Ran red light  _

__

_ Hit moose with car  _

__

_ Chased by moose  _

__

_ Got pulled over  _

__

_ Beat up a cop  _

__

_ Crashed into stop sign  _

__

_ Asked for directions in McDonald's drive thru  _

__

_ Drinking before 9 AM  _

__

_ Left the parking brake on on the freeway _

__

_ 16+ cups of coffee in a day  _

__

_ Freak goose congregation  _

__

_ Near death experience  _

__

_ Drove car over cliff  _

__

_ Drove car into river  _

__

_ Hitchhiked  _

__

_ Purchased motorcycle  _

__

_ Crashed motorcycle  _

__

_ Set motorcycle on fire  _

__

_ Stole car  _

__

_ Drove through window  _

__

_ Drove through restaurant  _

__

_ Broke down  _

__

Some of them have clusters of despondent tally marks lined up like soldiers next to them. Claude shows it to Jericho, glaring pointedly. 

__

Jericho has some things to add. 

__

If that's not depressing, Claude couldn't tell you what is. 

__

  
  


__

It has been four weeks, and Claude and Jericho belt the lyrics of the songs together, loud and discordant and horribly off key and Claude  _ doesn’t care,  _ that’s the wildest thing, that’s the worst of it. 

__

_ “You’re too high!”  _ Jericho shouts. 

__

_ “Put your fucking seatbelt on!”  _ Claude hollers back, and it’s awful and brilliant and sloppy in a way he never would have allowed himself without Jericho there, a constant strain on his psyche. A constant challenge, in one way or another. It’s something about road trips, probably. 

__

Yeah. Road trips. 

__

Here is what road trips are. 

__

Road trips are inherently messy. By their very nature, they keep you moving, keep you planning, keep you  _ stressing,  _ if you’re the stressing sort. They’re about tension, when all is said and done- the sleep deprivation, the speed, the threat of something going wrong at any moment. The tension between two traveling companions. 

__

Road trips are early mornings outside motels, bleary eyes and coffee stands, flat tires and conversations held for the sake of talking about anything at all. Chats that turn into arguments. Arguments that turn into… something. Sharing. Vulnerability. Something. Road trips are yellow sunlight and big skies and bigger stretches of world, and he’s never been a great appreciator of the  _ world  _ before, but  _ Jericho  _ is. 

__

Tension is… an illuminator. It forces you to think about things in ways you didn’t before. 

__

And what he's thinking is this: loving is hard. There. He's said it. He's dared to have the thought. Loving is really, really fucking difficult- confusing in all the worst ways, gut-wrenching, strangely easy to conflate with loathing, and damn near impossible to pull off the way you're supposed to. Claude doesn't relate to any of the love he sees around him. Not the couples walking hand in hand or making out in unexpected places, not the patient parents and their smelly noisy brats, not siblings or extended family or even the groups of friends who seem to be so common in this world of theirs. 

__

(And how does that happen, huh? How is something like friendship treated so casually, so commonplace? It had taken him twenty-two years to make  _ one  _ friend, and even that was a complete accident, a stroke of luck, or perhaps horrid misfortune.) 

__

The point is, Claude doesn't buy any of it. Not for him the poetic woes of young love. Or any poetic woes. Or any poetry, really. 

__

But when he thinks of love, he thinks of keys flying over the dented metal roof of an ancient car and fumbled catches. He thinks of gasoline and the stupid lyrics to angry punk songs and sweet coffee when he'd asked for black _.  _ He thinks of days endlessly, senselessly bickered away, of punches thrown and pillows dodged and a million petty insults. Instead of "I love you" he says "go fuck yourself" or "seriously, did you pass your drivers test" or "actually, his name is Simon." It's all he knows, and it will have to do. 

__

Road trips are hard. They're needlessly complicated and involve a lot of turnarounds, breakdowns, starts and stops and more starts. They're impossible to pull off the way you're supposed to, and he and Jericho seem to be doing it all wrong. 

__

So maybe they’re like love, in that regard. 

__

  
  


__

"Ice cream!" Jericho yells. 

__

Claude sighs heavily, and then he pulls over into the lot. Jericho looks at him in surprise. 

__

"Serious?" 

__

Claude makes a shooing motion. "Go get your ice cream. Then  _ shut up  _ about it." 

__

Jericho grins. "I knew I'd wear you down." He hops out of the car, then leans back in through the door, ignoring the rude gesture Claude makes in his direction. "You want anything?" 

__

"Hell no!" 

__

Jericho brings him a vanilla cone anyway, because Jericho fucking knows him. They sit on the car to eat their ice cream, Claude with his legs dangling over the side and Jericho sprawled languidly on the hood. The shadows are gauzy and shallow and there’s a feeling of endings, somehow, in the air around them, sharp and immutable and a bit melancholy in the afternoon light. They don’t talk about it. Instead they talk about other things- thoughts, ideas, the journey, bickering lazily in a way that is almost pleasant. Nothing that cuts too deep. Standard stuff. Peaceful. 

__

“Okay, so, so if I had to choose?” 

__

“Yes.” 

__

“And I can’t say being asleep.”    


“Right.” 

__

“Uhmm…” Claude scratches his head. Makes a face. “I guess…”  _ Chopsticks, Jericho’s hands on his. Jericho’s voice, explaining why sunsets are beautiful and people are interesting. Jericho’s teasing sidelong grins as he hands over the wrong coffee order.  _ “That time you ate four whole cheesecakes in that diner on a bet and spent the night chucking your guts.” Claude chuckles a bit at the memory. Jericho winces. 

__

“You’re so bloody minded,” he grumbles mildly. “That  _ sucked.”  _

__

“Funniest thing I’ve seen on the trip,” Claude assures him. “Ergo, my favorite.” It  _ had  _ been funny. Everything about it had been funny- Jericho’s stubborn resolve to do it, Jericho’s confidence that he could, his pained expression as he worked his way through the fourth one, the color of his face as he dropped his spoon and sprinted to the bathroom. It had been well worth the wager money Claude had forked over. He bites the side of his cone and smiles a little thinking about it. 

__

“What about you?” he says after a moment. 

__

“Favorite part of the trip?” 

__

“Yah.” 

__

“Hmm.” Jericho tips his head back and stares contemplatively at the sky. It’s no sunset, but the afternoon sun casts everything in a heady golden sheen and the clouds float softly within it, perfectly content. It catches on the planes of Jericho’s face, which  _ totally  _ isn’t fair. He would almost look profound, gold-lit like that, if Claude didn’t know firsthand what a moron he is. 

__

He looks away. 

__

“The time  _ you  _ got into a bar fight with some bikers,” Jericho decides. 

__

“Bastard!”    


“Yeah, yeah.” Jericho glances up at him. “How’d they even win? I’ve been meaning to ask. You may be totally incompetent in all other areas, but I know for a _fact_ that you can hold your own in a fight.” 

__

“First of all, they didn’t  _ win,”  _ says Claude sullenly. 

__

“They dislocated your shoulder!” Jericho had had to snap it back into place. Claude is pretty sure his companion had almost broken his arm doing that. 

__

_ “Second of all,”  _ snaps Claude, “there were _ five  _ of them? And I’d been drinking. And they were already pissed off because  _ you  _ won all their damn money off them playing poker.” Actually, the poker had been pretty cool to watch. Jericho was doing alright to start with. He started doing even better once Claude realized he could lurk behind their opponents and subtly signal what hands they had. This worked  _ great  _ until one of them figured it out. Jericho, of course, made himself conveniently scarce and left Claude to deal with it. Naturally, Claude figures, that sort of teamwork between the two of them couldn’t be allowed to continue for long. 

__

Jericho chuckles. “That’s right, I did. Good times, all around.” 

__

“You’re a lunatic.” 

__

There’s no bite to it, and all Jericho does in response is shoot Claude a lazy little gold-light half smile. He’s got a tiny smudge of ice cream on the sleeve of his suit. Jericho doesn’t mention it, just concentrates on the sun and the sweetness and the stillness of the world around them. Claude, too, closes his eyes and enjoys it. Just briefly. While he can. 

__

Jericho drives what will end up being the final stretch of their journey as a duo. He requests his favorite song off the album, and Claude plays it. All the way through. And even sings along, as Jericho shouts the words with his window rolled down and cigarette dangling out and _even_ his seatbelt fastened. They drive like this all the way into the small town of Meryl, and they find the guy they’re looking for quicker than expected, and that is that. 

__

Four weeks, two days. 

__

And Claude thinks about the question.  _ What was your favorite part of the trip?  _ For all that they’d been at the whims of Murphy’s law the entire time, he finds himself looking back on the calamities they’d survived with a certain sense of… he tries to place it. Pride? Affection? Maybe it’s just relief that it’s over. Whatever this part of the journey will be, it’s a new one. He allows himself the luxury of one small, satisfied smile. 

__

Well. 

__

All in all, he thinks, as long as he never has to admit this to anyone else… it was fun. 

__

Claude gets out of the car, where Jericho is already talking with a startled-looking Mikiah Kelman. He inhales deeply, breathing in the Something New. 

__

“Actually,” he says, “His name is Simon.” 

__

**Author's Note:**

> Do I think either of them is this introspective in canon? No. Can you PROVE that they're not? Also no. Cheers 
> 
> By the way, Jericho's car is 1000% based on the car my current roommate has, and we've made a good third of these mistakes irl. This is grounded in reality


End file.
